A number of computer systems and programs are offered on the market for the design, the engineering and the manufacturing of objects. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design, e.g. it relates to software solutions for designing an object. CAE is an acronym for Computer-Aided Engineering, e.g. it relates to software solutions for simulating the physical behavior of a future product. CAM is an acronym for Computer-Aided Manufacturing, e.g. it relates to software solutions for defining manufacturing processes and operations. In such computer-aided design computer systems, the graphical user interface plays an important role as regards the efficiency of the technique. These techniques may be embedded within Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) computer systems. PLM refers to a business strategy that helps companies to share product data, apply common processes, and leverage corporate knowledge for the development of products from conception to the end of their life, across the concept of extended enterprise.
The PLM solutions provided by DASSAULT SYSTEMES (under the trademarks CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA) provide an Engineering Hub, which organizes product engineering knowledge, a Manufacturing Hub, which manages manufacturing engineering knowledge, and an Enterprise Hub which enables enterprise integrations and connections into both the Engineering and Manufacturing Hubs. All together the solution delivers an open object model linking products, processes, resources to enable dynamic, knowledge-based product creation and decision support that drives optimized product definition, manufacturing preparation, production and service.
Many computer systems allow the use of block diagrams, which is now very popular to model and display multi-physics systems. Block diagrams provide a schematic and easy-to-apprehend representation of the division of a multi-physics global system into its sub-systems and the multi-physics connections between said sub-systems. Known solutions include various tools enabling navigation in complex multi-level block diagrams (e.g. SysML based tools such as IBM Rhapsody, Atego Studio and Sparx Entreprise Architect or The Mathworks Simulink, all registered trademarks), which notably propose a simple double-clicking to explore a lower level and a user intention to switch back to a higher level.
Within this context, there is still a need for an improved solution to design a multi-physics system. Notably, improving the ergonomics of existing block diagram design solutions is of particular interest.